A heavy cannabis user told a doctor he once thought he was Hitler 10 days before he killed a vulnerable patient at a Scunthorpe mental health unit, a court heard.

Jamie Charles Reed, 26, punched, choked and jabbed Robert McNeil, 60, with a pen in his room at the Great Oaks NHS unit on January 16.

Reed told doctors he came from a broken home, his girlfriend had split with him and he smoked up to £120 worth of cannabis a day before hearing voices. He said he had climbed on the roof of a church and taken a knife out of a drawer to harm others before he twice asked to be admitted to a mental health hospital, Hull Crown Court heard.

Giving evidence at the trial today (Thursday July 6), Dr Ramneesh Puri, a consultant forensic psychiatrist at Rampton High Security Hospital, told the jury he believed Reed had got himself admitted to hospital to get away from his girlfriend and had strong feelings of anger against his father.

He said on January 6, Reed had told a doctor in Scunthorpe he had suffered from psychosis all his life.

"He told the doctor he saw himself as Hitler at school and wished to be feared around the world," said Dr Puri. "He showed the doctor hair cream in his suitcase and said it was so he looked like Hitler youth.

"He told them he had used video games as part of his life for 17 years and said he wanted to be put into seclusion. He asked the doctor what he should do if he had to defend himself. He was told to speak up, if he had any problems."

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Dr Puri said Reed told the doctor in Scunthorpe he had handed in a sharpened toothbrush he had made as a weapon. Dr Puri continued: "He said he liked to have a weapon at hand. He talked about his fascination with black holes and gamma radiation and wanted to learn Russian."

Dr Puri - who spent a day with Reed - said he had told him he was the second of three children whose dad was a taxi driver and mother was a housewife. He said his mother and father had split up when he was aged three. His dad was in the Army in Germany. He returned to England to live with his mother. He said he was not happy about the split and had been bullied at school being called "milk bottle" because of his blond hair. He described himself as quiet, running away from home at the age of eight.

Dr Puri continued: "He said he had been involved in youth gangs in his teenage years and said he had been involved in setting fires – but I have seen no evidence of that."

Reed said he spent hours playing video games like Zelda and Moonscape, smoking cannabis worth between £30 and £120 a day. He said he did it as a way of controlling his anxiety and negative feelings. He claimed to bunk off school to "smoke weed", leaving with GCSEs in English, Religious Education and science and becoming a groundsman at a country park.

"He said he was sacked after a fight with a supervisor," said Dr Puri. He said Reed claimed he "loved to bits" his partner of five years, but struggled financially to meet her holiday expectations and she had been on at him about his drug use.

Dr Puri said Reed presented himself at Scunthorpe General Hospital's accident and emergency department on December 20 after taking Spice – a synthetic form of cannabis - by accident. He told staff he had a bad reaction to a street-sourced drug and had on-and-off chest pains and suicidal thoughts. He said Reed was using the word psychotic.

"The assessment of the community psychiatric nurse was there was no real evidence of psychosis," said Dr Puri.

The doctor said Reed was seen daily from December 20 to January 3 by doctors of the local mental health team who twice refused his admission to a mental health hospital. However, after picking up a knife in an argument with his girlfriend he was admitted under Section 20 of the Mental Health Act, for assessment for 28-days.

Reed told doctors he had fallen out with his girlfriend and seeing his father for the first time at Christmas after six years had left him feeling angry. On January 9, he told staff he had been admitted to hospital to get away from his girlfriend and complained his treatment was sub-standard.